We are pleased to announce that the future of Broadband arrived this morning in the form of ‘Broadband Your Way’. Broadband Your Way replaces our existing product set for all new PlusNet, Force9 and Free-Online customers. Existing customers will be able to remain on their current products, but as of this morning our previous products have all been withdrawn from sale.

Four OptionsOur new offering, Broadband Your Way, is available in 4 base options with included allowances as follows :

You can choose to have your Broadband Your Way as a fixed price product, or you can opt to bolt on extra usage. If you want extra usage, then you can opt to pre-pay for it at a cost of 75p per GB per month, or post-pay at £1.00 per GB – once you have hit your included allowance. If you don’t wish to post-pay for usage, or don’t add any pre-paid extra usage, then your broadband speeds will be restricted to 128kbps once you hit your monthly usage allowance and have used any pre-paid extra usage.

If you’ve configured your Broadband Your Way to post-pay extra GB’s, then we have adapted the ‘Data Transfer Watch’ tool to enable you to set a maximum price that you would like to pay. Once this is reached, we will stop adding extra usage blocks and your speeds will instead be reduced across the board to 128kbps. This enables you to continue to use your Broadband connection, but at a reduced speed until a new billing month starts.

Usage is counted between the hours of 8:00am and Midnight every day and includes both Uploads and Downloads. Outside of these hours usage is free of charge and not taken from your usage allowance. All usage allowances and pre/post-pay extra usage is calculated by billing month and is reset on your billing date.

Product FeaturesBroadband Your Way is provided with speeds of ‘Up to 8Mb’ and is based on a Monthly Contract.

The new product includes all the popular product features as our Broadband Premier and Pay As You Go products used to. The following are just some of the features included at no extra cost in your monthly subscription:-- Broadband Firewall- Unlimited Email addresses- Anti-Virus and Spam Detection on Email- Included Broadband Phone minutes- 250MB Webspace with 250MB daily traffic allowance- MySQL Database Hosting- CGI Server Hosting- FrontPage Extensions- Ability to host up to 5 domains- Text Usenet Access- 0808 Free Dialup if you open a Broadband Fault

Broadband Your Way comes with a Dynamic IP address by default, but with the ability to enable a Static IP at no extra cost. If you do not know what a Static IP is, it is likely you do not need one. A Static IP can be activated at any time, via the Member Centre. Customers moving onto Broadband Your Way from a current product with a Static IP will retain it following the change of product.

Product ChangesGoing forwards, all new signups will be onto a Broadband Your Way option. We will make no charges for you to more to Broadband Your Way. Once on Broadband Your Way, you can change your included allowances or switch options once a month without incurring any downgrade charges.

Broadband Your Way on our Broadband NetworkWe’ve updated our Help and Support pages with more information than ever before on how we manage these products on our network. We prioritise traffic differently on the different options.

For information on how you can expect Broadband Your Way to perform, see the following information :

Free Setup Offer EvolvedThe hardware provided with our Free Setup option is changing. Customers signing up to Options 1 or 2 can order a 1 Port router, whilst signups to Options 3 or 4 can get a Wireless Router. There is no charge for this hardware or activation if the customer is with us for 12 months or more. Broadband Your Way is a monthly contract product, so customers can choose to repay us for the hardware and activation and leave without any penalties.

Broadband Your Way – what’s next?This is just the start of Broadband Your Way. Our intention is to constantly evolve Broadband Your Way with new features, management tools and additional services. The next features we'll launch include: • A 'speed boost' facility to deliver a 5-star experience for downloads• A BT Home Hub hardware option • Bundled WiFi minutes with BT Openzone• Improvements and enhancements to the 'Broadband Your Way Control Panel'• Sliding-scale referral values based on the amount you spend

Geographical SupportIn response to feedback from the PlusNet Usergroup and following discussions at our Customer Open Day, we are pleased to announce that we will be launching a geographical number to contact support in May. This will allow many customers to benefit from using their inclusive minutes in their home or mobile phone packages if they need to contact us.More informationWe’ll be emailing all our customers over the next week informing them of these new products now available to them. For more information about our Broadband Your Way products, see the product pages on our website, here:-http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/

If the maximum speeds are to be as stated in the link I am appalled - this is nearly going back to dialup for anything except normal browsing. I for one will not be touching it with a bargepole - I will stick with my PAYG 4GB included Just to add - how can FTP and download sites be classed as gold with these expected speeds.Are there two different golds - PAYG and the new product

Hmmm, I agree with Oldjim. I thought this was a great opportunity to tweak the product - I could either save a couple of quid a month, or get some more data down the pipe during 'working hours'. I guess that'd be okay if I was happy to sit and watch paint dry. The transfer speeds as marked for option 1 and 2 are pathetic. And why would I want to pay more per month to get the speeds I'm getting now?

Or - and here's the worry - is traffic shaping being applied to *all* accounts as we speak?

these are included on all ? makes no sense; Unlimited email addresses, for option one would be pointless, even 25 would be excessive, your just asking people to hammer the email platform

Webspace, should be added as an extra, even then it should be plain old html only sort, and you should have to pay more for PHP, MySQL and others, same goes with CGI and Frontpage extensions.

host up to 5 domains ? on option 1 ? really...

Text Usenet Access, this is where i guess i am going to say something PN wont like, as they are wholesaling their text service, what a waste of money... seriously, Anyone who 'knows' what usenet is, and wants to use the text can Pay themselves for this "service" from PN, why should everyone else have to pay for it.

The Speeds on the "new" product is pathetic, the fact you cant buy the old products along-side it is another downside, as your stuck with these pre-defined choices.

Not happy about the fact that "peak" usage has moved times (again!).

Put it this way, if the products dont get some tweaking 1) customers are not going to like these restrictions, come on lets face it, Option 1/2 customers might aswell sign up with Sky BB for £5 a month and get no restrictions bar a total usage cap. 2) Your gonna get alot less "referrals" which are PN's aparently "Preferred" method of advertising, at a time when im sure referrals are low due to the recent "Issues"

About the best bit of the products is the 'price' of extra GB. The usage for option 4 is OK, although abit costly still.

It depends on your interpretation of "maximum speed" for the protocol. To my mind that means none of the protocols listed in the table will exceed those stated numbers at any time. Ironically this means there is little point in having a line speed >1M unless you use it in the middle of the night.

OTOH, if you mean "we don't guarantee to maintain a speed above these numbers" then it's not so bad - though that would be more like what I'd call "minimum speed".

Now, what existing customers would like to know is: Can we have a table like that for legacy products please? On my legacy PAYG account, what "maximum" (whatever it means) speeds on those protocols can I expect to see? What precious metal queues is my traffic in?

In other words, how would I know if I'd like to move to new products, or recommend someone for them, based on past experience?

Having just got back in and had a bit more time to study the new packages and also to look back at all the previous explanations about product design I totally fail to understand the rationale for the new products.We now have products which even if used at 50% of the stated capacity are not viable given the cost of provision by BTw.As a comparison PAYG which has the same peak time as the new products only gives 2GB for £14.99 whereas the new option 2 gives 8GB in the same period. If the upcoming 5 star service (I assume equivalent to the present PAYG) is not priced the same as PAYG then the day that PlusNet withdraw or restrict the present PAYG product is the day I seriously consider applying for my MAC.

Having just got back in and had a bit more time to study the new packages and also to look back at all the previous explanations about product design I totally fail to understand the rationale for the new products.We now have products which even if used at 50% of the stated capacity are not viable given the cost of provision by BTw.As a comparison PAYG which has the same peak time as the new products only gives 2GB for £14.99 whereas the new option 2 gives 8GB in the same period. If the upcoming 5 star service (I assume equivalent to the present PAYG) is not priced the same as PAYG then the day that PlusNet withdraw or restrict the present PAYG product is the day I seriously consider applying for my MAC.

Where to start...

The product rationale is the same. The new products are based on us forward pricing to the upcoming BT Central cost changes. I don't want to hype it too much, but I'm planning to write an explanation of the product design behind BBYW this week. It is certainly sustainable, especially when you bear in mind the protocols which don't get line speed (and so don't drive up the overall capacity requirement) at peak times.

PAYG won't be withdrawn, but the fact is that it's not a product desing that would work if you put everyone on it.

It depends on your interpretation of "maximum speed" for the protocol. To my mind that means none of the protocols listed in the table will exceed those stated numbers at any time. Ironically this means there is little point in having a line speed >1M unless you use it in the middle of the night.

OTOH, if you mean "we don't guarantee to maintain a speed above these numbers" then it's not so bad - though that would be more like what I'd call "minimum speed".

Now, what existing customers would like to know is: Can we have a table like that for legacy products please? On my legacy PAYG account, what "maximum" (whatever it means) speeds on those protocols can I expect to see? What precious metal queues is my traffic in?

In other words, how would I know if I'd like to move to new products, or recommend someone for them, based on past experience?

Yes - The table showing the comparison of BBYW with Plus and Premier speeds should be published tomorrow. A lot of people had to work through the bank holiday to deliver BBYW on time, and we just didn't get chance to do commit that page before the roll-out.

The speeds listed are what we'd expect to be able to deliver, but you are not going to get faster for File Sharing / Binary Usenet / FTP at this point.

Frankly, I don't buy that only those applications benefit from a faster connection. Think about things like video, use of which is growing rapidly and which is already being used by a lot more people than those who use P2P or Binary Usenet regularily. Add a couple of things - Streaming radio in the kitchen and a gamer upstairs perhaps, and I can quite imagine the need for your connection to have some power.

Especially with sites like Joost coming to the mainstream, 'rich media' (Or whatever we call it this week) demand can only be expected to grow, and as it does I think we'll see what happens at other ISPs who don't have some of those protocols under control.

We don't want to punish downloaders, and we will soon have product options that I think will work even for people that don't mind paying a bit more so they can drive their Range Rovers at top whack around the M25 at rush hour. I'm not under any illusions - having seen the speed average usage is growing across the board on uncapped networks, I'm convinced the reasons why our approach is better will soon become apparant, even if they aren't to everyone now.

these are included on all ? makes no sense; Unlimited email addresses, for option one would be pointless, even 25 would be excessive, your just asking people to hammer the email platform rolleyes

Webspace, should be added as an extra, even then it should be plain old html only sort, and you should have to pay more for PHP, MySQL and others, same goes with CGI and Frontpage extensions.

host up to 5 domains ? on option 1 ? really... rolleyes

Text Usenet Access, this is where i guess i am going to say something PN wont like, as they are wholesaling their text service, what a waste of money... seriously, Anyone who 'knows' what usenet is, and wants to use the text can Pay themselves for this "service" from PN, why should everyone else have to pay for it.

All of the above make up in the region of between 35p and 50p for each subscription. We'd have to run the services to similar standards even without lots of people using them, and we'd lose a big USP if we charged a few quid a month for all the above.

Would you honestly swap all the stuff we can give to everyone as a value add, for a 50p cost reduction on each product?

So "Peak" as such is now 8am to Midnight every day and for Premier prices you can get 22Gb usage per month on a product that gives you more than that (supposedly) in less hours (4pm-midnight)

Really poor move - I'd love to know the discussion that went on within PUG about this as I know for a fact I'd have screamed about this one.

It has been discussed a few times in the past Mike. We've definately moved away from the idea of there being a 'peak' time now - The network is always going to be pretty busy and we could add a couple of Centrals tomorrow without that changing much. The usage allowance lets us offer the hybrid between a usage allowance and payed for usage, which was one of the biggest things people asked for (See the list of questions we were asked, and the answers here. It's also not far off what everyone else does, and from that point of view it makes our products easier to understand for people (I think the press coverage of BBYW so also backs that up!).

I do need to check how we handle Joost, but that's an example of a service many thousands more people than use P2P could demand 'just works', and it's the sort of content I believe we have to be able to deliver in order to ensure customers don't get severly annoyed with their connections over the next 6-12 months.